


Bone to Ash

by elenathehun



Category: Naruto
Genre: Aftermath, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Kirigakure's Civil War, Male-Female Friendship, Revanchists - Freeform, Suicide Charge, The Kaguya Clan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-19
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-08-31 22:43:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8596648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elenathehun/pseuds/elenathehun
Summary: The Kaguya Clan: They’re a pest even after death.  What inconvenient people!





	

The stink is ghastly, but not unexpected. There are three dozen corpses piled up to rot for the last two days in the wet heat of the westernmost island in Mist’s archipelago - it would be more surprising if they _didn’t_ stink of offal and iron and burnt meat.

“You couldn’t burn them even with a mass fireball?” Mei questions as she circles around the macabre pile.

“No,” Ao replies, breathing shallowly through his mouth. "But that doesn’t mean much. We don’t have many people with a natural affinity for that element, and with the summer rains upon us-“

“Yes, I can see the results,” Mei says, just a touch of impatience in her voice. “But I don’t see why Kojuro’s squad couldn’t just dig a pit and bury them in it.”

“That’s not an option either,” Ao sighs. "Too easy for the bodies to come to light; if the histories are right, the bones won’t rot, either.“

” _‘If the histories are right?’_ I feel like you’re holding out on me, Ao,“ Mei says teasingly. "Who are these people and why are their bodies so hard to destroy?”

“Not their bodies, their _bones_ ,” Ao says plainly. "I think they’re what’s left of the Kaguya Clan.“

A pause, and then-

"The _Shikotsumyaku_ ,” Mei sighs reverently, eyes alight. “I thought that was just a myth.”

“No, it’s real - or at least it was,” Ao says, correcting himself midway with a bitter quirk to his mouth. “The blood had run thin by my grandmother’s day, though. Senju Hashirama cast them out of Fire country, and they settled here to seethe in silence.”

Mei doesn’t bother to respond, just shrugs off her coat and throws it at Ao to catch and hold in his arms while she bends down to inspect the nearest body more closely. Wouldn’t do to get blood on it, after all; it was a pain to clean out of silk, and Mei’s money was better spent on swords these days. Mei grasps the shoulder of one of the less-scorched bodies and turns it over, inspecting the bloated face and clothes. She doesn’t even blink at the sight of maggots squirming in the man’s open viscera.

“They look a little like a painting from the old days,” Mei says after a moment. "No swords, no armor - whyever did they attack us?“

"Who knows? They never had much sense to begin with,” Ao says with a shrug. "They fought with old Byakuren, too. Didn’t think much of their new neighbors, didn’t think much of the idea of a village…“

"Ah,” Mei says, dropping the wrist of the body she was inspecting back to the ground. "I understand. They were revanchists of a sort, dreaming of the glory days of clan against clan. I suppose that explains the suicide charge.“

Ao remains silent, and Mei smiles at him sweetly. "But you still haven’t explained why I’m here, old friend. This is tragic, but hardly requires my skills.”

“Orochimaru was sighted in the area,” Ao states, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looks utterly exhausted, and Mei feels a flash of fond worry for the older man. "Given his predilections, I thought it would be best to eradicate the bodies totally. You’re the only person I know who has the skill to do that.“

"Well, when you put it that way, how can I refuse?" 

* * *

Ao takes her coat and moves upwind a few hundred feet. Sensible of him: Mei is immune to her own caustic gifts, but no one else is. As soon as he is a safe distance away, Mei breathed in…and then _out_.

It’s hard to explain how the Boil Release feels when Mei is in the center of it. As she watches the Kaguya clansmen’s skin boil off their muscles and their simple cotton clothing turn to ash, she luxuriates in the feel of the mist lightly touching her face. It reminds her of better days: dawn on the pebble beaches of her childhood, her father guiding her through the breathing meditations in preparation for morning drills. Those days ended long ago, but Mei tries to keep the memory of it close to hand. 

"How’s it going?” the old hunter calls from behind her, awe still audible in his voice after all these years. A long time ago, Ao had told her the sight of her smiling as she walked through her own deadly cloud of acid had convinced him that she was meant to rule over their broken country. Mei hadn’t put much stock in his words - after all, she _had_ just beaten him halfway to death, people had a tendency to speak gibberish when the end was near - but there must be something to it because the old hunter-nin hasn’t left her side since.

“Not too much longer!” she calls back before blowing another acid cloud towards the corpses The flesh is literally melting off the bones, and the visceral fat sizzles as it burns. It smells delicious - exactly like pork belly on a charcoal grill. A gruesome thought, even for a shinobi. Soon enough, the scent changes to the overpowering aroma of burning shit as the offal burns, and then all that’s left are the bones.

The bones don’t burn.

“Curious,” Mei says with a moue of distaste and blows another draft of acid onto the pile of bones. They sizzle but stubbornly resist disintegration. Mei sighs and stops breathing the boil release out. How unfortunate: she’d hoped for total destruction, but that seems like it won’t be possible…

“What’s taking so long?” Ao asks, a little closer to her now that the poisonous mist is clearing. Mei bends over and starts throwing the bones at the edge towards the center, but thinks better of it when she notes all the little finger and toe bones scattered on the ground.

“The _Shikotsumyaku_ is just dormant, not dead,” Mei explains with a disgusted tone. "Or at least, it wasn’t dead until these fools charged blindly onto our swords.“

Ao doesn’t understand, but that’s not new, either. Bloodline limit inheritance is one of those tricky subjects not spoken about, not really. The careful web of marriages within a clan (close, but not _too_ close), the heavy decision to marry out for a generation and bring fresh blood in (sometimes it goes wrong, and the limit becomes a legend; sometimes it goes right, and the limit grows even stronger) - all of this would be foreign to Ao. Explaining how foolish the Kaguya Clan had been would take far too long, and he really wouldn’t care, anyway.

(Mei’s mother was the fourth daughter of a lesser branch family; Mei’s father was the seventh son of a main branch family once overflowing with far too many children. Mei was never meant to inherit either of her birthrights; Mei was never meant to be much of anyone at all.)

"Stand back a little further,” she tells Ao and then takes a step back herself. "I’m going to use my Lava release.“ 

Once, one of the kids who’d started loitering at the camps asked Mei about the difference in sensation between her lava and boil release. Mei had paused for a moment, really trying to think about it, but was only able to shrug and tell the kid, _Lava feels thicker, that’s all._ He’d looked so tragically disappointed she’d ruffled his fluffy blue hair just to make the kid smile again. (Fifteen years ago, fresh from her graduation exam, Mei would have laughed at the idea of coddling a child; now she fights Yagura in the name of all the children he’s destroyed.) The boy is not the only person who’s asked the question, but Mei really can’t give a better answer than that - lava just feels thicker and more sluggish than boil. Maybe it’s because fire is the most dominant element in either of them, but either way, they don’t feel that different from each other.

Mei breathes in, and then breathes out, really squeezing her rib cage on the exhale this time, and a stream of superheated lava spews out and begins covering all that remains of the Kaguya Clan. Mei is fast at it - in less thirty seconds, she’s created a perfect circle of lava with a diameter of nearly thirty feet.

"You couldn’t make it look less perfect?” Ao asks. "Now everyone and their mother will know something is hidden underneath it.“

_Everyone is a critic_ , Mei thinks a bit sullenly. But she only smiles a bit at Ao, making sure to maintain eye contact, and says, "Then they’re welcome to try and dig their way through a solid layer of basalt, aren’t they?”

There’s a pause, and then Ao’s single eye slides away from her gaze. "Yeah, sounds good. But I think I’ll leave a few passive seals, just in case.“

"An excellent idea, Ao,” she replies sincerely. "Let me just get my coat on while you do that.“

* * *

Not too much later, Mei and Ao leave the area, running back to the front against Yagura’s forces. They’re deadlocked on Crane Island; two weeks from now, Mei will lead a massive attack and break through Yagura’s right flank. It’s the beginning of the end for the old regime; Mei pushes through after that, island by island, outpost by outpost until she returns to the Village Hidden in the Mist and breaks their mighty doors down with her burning breath. 

That’s all in the future, though. Right now, there’s only a disc of basalt cooling on the ground and a creature from nightmares standing next to it. 

"Aw! That lady ruined our meal!” one voice says petulantly. There’s barely a pause before a deeper voice answers it. Strangely, it appears to come from the same body as the first voice.

“Too many bones, anyway. Like choking on a burnt fish.”

The basalt steams gently, hissing as a few stray drops of rain hit the surface of the disk.

“Let’s go back to Mist,” the second voice says, and the first voice agrees almost immediately.

“Yes, back to Mist! Back to food!" 

**Author's Note:**

> This was posted to tumblr on 1 Nov 2016 for Sumigakure's Halloween Event 2016. It was written as a fill for prompt #5 Skeleton Wars. 
> 
> This was the first time I ever wrote Mei and company, and I chose to focus on the implied canon background while ignoring the typical Kishimoto comedy tic where a woman who rules a country torn by civil war spends a significant amount of her screen time worried about being a spinster. Truthfully, the section with Zetsu feels poorly written at this point, but I elected to leave it in. I wouldn't mind working with Mei and Ao again, though - I feel like she has a lot of untapped potential for writers in this fandom.


End file.
